Omaha daily bee., 1887-09-17
Norway @. But tho population Of Russia
Is increasing at the rate Of 1850, 900 =
year, and in half century IL will, at this
rate, exceed 15O, ,0OO, 600.
Tho New Literary Giant.

In0 NOW LlVerdry Htant.
T. w. Higginson in Harper's Bazaar:
Theodore Parker used to exasperate his
friends, thirty or forty years ago. by de-
voting his summer vacations, not to rest,
but to the study of the Russian language.
This he justified on the ground that we
had no right to remain in utter ignorance
OF the vocabulary of II nation Of 10, 100000
people. AT that time there was, among
English speaking people, a complete
ignorance OF Russian literature. except
as this darkness was broken by little
volume translated by Sir John Bowring
from the Russian poets. Nobody could
possibly have fOreseen period when
France, England and America should all
turn to this neglected region for q new
inspiration; when the most fastidious
literary men Of the most fastidious liter.
ary centre in the Old World should recog-
nize Tourguenietf not only rs their peer,
elist Of the New World should place
Tolstoi at the head Of all writer's of
fiction, living or dead. Never. perhaps,
wns so great a fame won In so short a
time through the medium of translations
only. The number of those VINO actually
read Russian, though greater than In
Theodore Parker's day, is still almost
absurdly small, and not RAPIDLY increaS-
ing. During the shortlived enthusiasm
for Frederika Bremer's novels, forty
years ago, good many persons learned
Swedish in order to read them in the
original; hut even those most eager to
read the Russian writer's rarely attack
them in their own tongue, being content
to receive them often through double
dilution, first in French and then in
English. What is to be the end of the
new enthusiasm? Is it to pass wholly
away, like the zeal for Miss Bremer's
books, or are these writer's to constitute a
permanent force in literature9 So long
AS Tourguenieff's was the only voice that
reached US, there was an impression of
something unique and individuals; he
seemed to triumph in spite of Russia, not
as her representative; and his long self.
whether he might not be as much French
as Russian. Then came the extraordi.
nary phenomenon of Tolstoi and even
the most reluctant were convinced that
there must be something in the blood
and in the brain of the dlmly seen and
mysterious northern race that could pro-
duce such men. Then came other figures,
reaching such a varied range of social
cOnditions--nOt only Tourguenief, the
charming man of the world, and Tolstoi,
the nobleman, the soldier, the recluse,
but also GOgol, the monk, and Dostoley-
sky, the convict-comblning all ante.
cedents. all varieties OF training, in their
extraordinary result of powerful and
penetrating work.
There are two ways in which an author
can be pernicious-by bad moral or by
of these errors is committed to the mere
choice OF illicit love as theme does not
make book ipadmissible, else must the
Scarlet Letter be condemned. Of all
stories of this description Tolstoi has
written the most powerful, the most mer.
cless; there is not n moment when the
reader does not foresee tragedy Mt the
end of the path on which the guilty
lovers enter; nor is there any voluptuous-
ness of description TO beguile the senses.
The very fact that these two persons
have noble traits only strengthens the
moral; their downfall and its retribution
are such as would be encountered only
by persons capable Of higher things, and
after they have once gone wrong, the
deceived husband, far inferior to them by
nature, becomes their superior by his
action Nor is the retribution an external
accident, but is worked out by the very
essentials of the sin. 1t is book which
IN Its Wilderness Is Il tremendous warning
against wrong-doing, not an Indictment
to it. And throughout the Russian nov
ellsts, so far as l have seen, although
there is sometimes greater freedom of
allusion than is customary among our
selves, it is in the direction not merely Of
truth and nature. but of stern ethics,
with habitual absence of the current
French taste for indecent descriptions.
But what seems most surprising in cur.
rent criticism is the disposition to claim
the Russian writers as eXponents of what
is now called realism. Surely they are
realists only in the sense in which George
Eliot was one with the most careful ac-
curacy of description and the profound
est portraiture of character, but always
preserving a perceptive, always subordl-
mating the little to the great. There is no
trace in them of that maxim LAID down
by Mr.. Howells in his "Wedding Jour
ney, perhaps in an unguarded moment,
that ''the sincere observer of man will
not desire to look upon his heroic or
occasional phases" All the power of
War and Peace" turns upon the heroic
phases, which are the backbone of its
strength, while no one else has so we'll
delineated the confusion, the incoher-
ence, the delay and tedium. which COM
bine with the heroism to make up war;
But if Tolstoi had gwen these "habitual
moods of vacancy and tiresomeness'.'
alone-to quote again from Howell-the
would not have achieved success. As is
stands, he has written not merely the
greatest of military novels, but we might
almost say the only one. And with what
ever notifications of praise or censure,
it must be admitted that these strong
Russian writers-they always speak, be
it observed, of European" as meaning
something distinct from "Russian"-
have come into literature like the giant
that rose suddenly from the tisherman's
urn-sOmething vast, powerful, unex.
pected. Their men and women seem
more alive. more vascular, more endowed
with veins and with muscles, than any
othe. current creations; and the very fact
that they have behind them the vast,
gloomy, hopeless. helpless Russia-this
but enhances the power of their pictures.
A New Mammoth Gave.